IDF vs. Hamas War Extends to Social Media

Israeli and Palestinian forces use social media to win over world sympathy as war enters a new phase.

For many, the first shot in the most recent conflict in Gaza was fired at 6:29 a.m. Pacific on Nov. 14.

"The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas & Islamic Jihad targets," the account of the Israeli Defense Forces, @IDFspokesperson, tweeted. Soon after that, the IDF added a second tweet: "The first target, hit minutes ago, was Ahmed Al-Jabari, head of the #Hamas military wing," with a link to the IDF blog. Then it sent a stark warning to Hamas: "We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead."

IDF then added an image of Al-Jabari, with the word "Eliminated" attached.

What helped make IDF's social presence a true war of words, however, was Hamas's participation. Within minutes, the @AlqassamBrigade account had begun tweeting its own accounts of the fighting, presenting images of what the account said was casualties of the attacks, and reporting its own initiatives against the Israeli forces and Israel herself.

Both sides attempted to use social media as a means of persuasion to attract converts and shift world opinion to its side. As far as the number of social networks used, the IDF appears to be winning: the Israelis have a presence on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Flickr, even Tumblr. The IDF also had a presence on YouTube, where it posted a video purporting to show an Israeli strike on the car that killed a
Al-Jabari. YouTube originally took down the video, then reinstated it.

Hamas, however, has the active Twitter account as well as some Facebook pages that may or may not be linked to it. It appears that the first tweets of this new online war caught the world by surprise; the tweet announcing Al-Jabar's killing has just 246 retweets.

One thing is clear, however: with social media, organizations don't need the media to get their message out. They can do it themselves.

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